"Pickaxe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The front line's falling back. They'll stand here." He seized one or two of them and pushed them towards the door. "You," he said, "and you and you, get outside and round the back there. See if you can get a pickaxe, a trenching tool, anything, and break down that grating and knock a bigger hole in the window. We may have to crawl out there presently. The rest o' ye come with me an' help block up ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... yield, which will never yield, as they exist only on paper; quarries which as yet know not pickaxe or powder; untilled, sandy moors, which they survey with a gesture, saying, 'We begin here, and we go way over yonder, to the devil.' It's the same with the forests,—one whole densely wooded slope of Monte-Rotondo, which ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... multitude of victims for the sake of their religion and pecuniary gain. The Thug bands would assemble at fixed places of rendezvous, and before commencing their expeditions much strange ceremony had to be gone through. A sacred pickaxe was the emblem of their faith: its fashioning was wrought with quaint rites and its custody was a matter of great moment. Its point was supposed to indicate the line of route propitious to the disciples of the goddess, and ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... had disengaged on one side behind him, to be ready for carrying out in the morning. He heard a good deal of goblin-tapping, but it all sounded far away in the hill, and he paid it little heed. Towards midnight he began to feel rather hungry; so he dropped his pickaxe, got out a lump of bread which in the morning he had laid in a damp hole in the rock, sat down on a heap of ore, and ate his supper. Then he leaned back for five minutes' rest before beginning his work again, and laid his head ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... must be breaking rocks away up there," he said to himself, and climbed up the mountain. When he reached the top of the high rock, he found a Magic Pickaxe, all alone by itself, digging away at the hard stone as if ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory
... the old Romans used, admire their well-turned arches, and see the paint and plaster upon the walls of their apartments. The "Old Wall," so long a sphinx by the roadside, suggesting enigmas to passers-by, has found an interpreter in revelations which the spade and pickaxe have made within its shadow. From the time when its walls first fell down, it has furnished plunder to the country round. The old monks, finding it easier to take down its stones than to quarry now ones, ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... he urged the adoption of a system of irrigation. The villagers were at first most obstinate in their opposition to his plans; but he persevered, laid out a canal, and succeeded at last in enlisting a body of workmen, whom he led out, pickaxe in hand, himself taking a foremost part in the work; and at last the waters were let into the canal amidst joy and triumph. At Violens he helped to build and finish the chapel, himself doing mason-work, smith-work, and carpenter-work by turns. At Dormilhouse ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... pursue her relentlessly in order to capture her; I spent whole hours in opening up the trench with a knife a foot long by two inches wide, without meeting the Tarantula. I renewed the operation in other burrows, always with the same want of success; I really wanted a pickaxe to achieve my object, but I was too far from any kind of house. I was obliged to change my plan of attack and I resorted to craft. Necessity, they say, is the mother ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... old foundations rock; One scorns at him of old who gazed unshod; One striking with a pickaxe thinks the shock Shall ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... chariot, and King Pluto seemed greatly pleased to find himself once more in his own kingdom. He drew Proserpina's attention to the rich veins of gold that were to be seen among the rocks, and pointed to several places where one stroke of a pickaxe would loosen a bushel of diamonds. All along the road, indeed, there were sparkling gems, which would have been of inestimable value above ground, but which here were reckoned of the meaner sort and hardly worth ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... than is usual for an ordinary crop. A good open position is imperative, and where the soil is sufficiently deep, trenching is desirable. Shallow soil ought to be thoroughly dug down to the last inch, and it will be an advantage to break up the subsoil by pickaxe and fork. Cover the subsoil with a thick layer of rotten manure before restoring the top soil. For light land farmyard manure is excellent, but stable manure is preferable for stiff cold soil. The usual time for trenching ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... by force; but, finding his followers unruly, was wise enough to submit. He was sent with three others to the 'New Jail.' The prisoners in the King's Bench hereupon rose, and attacked the wall with a pickaxe. Soldiers were called in, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... that they might have disposed of some of the unburnable articles under the floor, and he lifted a rough board or two. But to pursue the search systematically he would have needed a pickaxe, and reluctantly he gave it up and turned his attention to the ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... religion," had enregistered the edict without difficulty; the gentlemen of the neighborhood came up in crowds, the Reformers to make their submission and the Catholics to congratulate the cardinal; on the day of his departure the pickaxe was laid to the fortifications of Montauban; those of Castres were already beginning to fall; and the Huguenot party in France was dead. Deprived of the political guarantees which had been granted them ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... foaming beneath the wheels of the Pont aux Meuniers, there was the Chalelet, no longer a Roman tower, as under Julian the Apostate, but a feudal tower of the thirteenth century, and of a stone so hard that the pickaxe could not break away so much as the thickness of the fist in a space of three hours; there was the rich square bell tower of Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie, with its angles all frothing with carvings, already admirable, although it was ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... aggery beads. Though Tanagra terra-cottas, and aggery beads, and fine examples of Moorish lustre, or of ancient Nankin, or of gold coins of the Roman Empire, are all rare, yet there is no definite limit to their number. More may turn up any day when the pickaxe breaks into a new Tanagra cemetery, when a fallen palm in Ashanti brings up aggery beads clinging to its earthy roots, when a pot of coins is found by some old Roman way, and so forth. To be sure, perfection may be attained in coin collecting, when a man has specimens of all known ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... guns, and could not shoot their game, whatever it was; but each of them had a biliong. This was the implement Achang had bought in Sarawak. It looked something like a pickaxe with only one arm, the end of which was fashioned like a mortising chisel, and was ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... lose their hardihood. I do not think antelopes could possibly get at water for several months together, as every drop of water in the country is guarded by the Somali. We were now in "the land of honey," and the Somali nomads constantly came to me to borrow my English pickaxe for digging it out of the ground; for the bees of this country, instead of settling in the boughs of trees, as they do in England, work holes in the ground like wasps, or take advantage more generally of chinks or fissures in the rocks to build their combs and deposit their wax. ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... going to Hector, whom he had told not to expect him, he got a pickaxe and spade, and proceeded to dig in the trodden heap. At the first blow of the pickaxe he came upon large stones—the job of clearing out which was by no means an easy one—so far from it, indeed, that, after working for half an hour, and only getting out two large and half a dozen ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... home that evening frightfully drunk, came near setting fire to the house, killed a horse by hitting it with a pickaxe, and ended up by lying down to sleep in the mud in the midst of the pouring rain, thanks to ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the contents of the safe. They broke open the carpenter's locker, and many tools were subsequently found on the floor. These evidently had not assisted the gang to any great extent, as they found it necessary to use a heavy pickaxe. The noise they made seems to have aroused the inmates of the neighbouring houses, and it is said that one resident struck a light and actually saw them at work, but he concluded that they were merely doing something in connection with ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... raked out miscellaneous tackle. But they were a little too eager. I excused myself and hunted up a map. Sure enough the lake was there, but it had been dry since a previous geological period. The fish were undoubtedly there too, but they were fossil fish. I borrowed a pickaxe and shovel and announced ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... killed his three half-breed children and a valuable pig. This is the third time John has played some scurvy trick, and it is about time the Superintendent discharged him. There is entirely too much of this practical joking amongst the boys, and it will lead to trouble yet.—Nugget Hill "Pickaxe ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... hundred, hobbled up to Ingmar, and sat down on the ground quite close to him. It seemed to be the only place where he could be at ease, for there he remained quietly, resting his shaky old hands on the crook of his cane. And as soon as old Lisa and Cowhouse Martha saw where Pickaxe Bengt had taken refuge, they, too, came tottering up, and sat down at Ingmar's feet. They did not speak to him, but somehow they must have had a vague idea that he would be able to protect them—he ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... night after the full moon, when everybody else was asleep, Hans crept quietly out of the house with a pickaxe, wrenched out the stone with much difficulty, and actually found the hole with the money, just as the dwarf had described it to him. Next Sunday he divided the third part among the poor of the parish, and gave notice to the parson that he was about to quit his service, ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... ignorant and soulless cunning and energy, with the frightful consequences which have now overtaken it. Tolstoy was no pessimist: he was not disposed to leave the house standing if he could bring it down about the ears of its pretty and amiable voluptuaries; and he wielded the pickaxe with a will. He treated the case of the inmates as one of opium poisoning, to be dealt with by seizing the patients roughly and exercising them violently until they were broad awake. Tchekov, more of a fatalist, had no ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... men took pickaxes out of the cart, the handles of the pickaxes and their iron heads, and each man slipped the head of his pickaxe over the handle and gave it a tap on the ground to ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... and, helping himself with his hands, holding on to the branches of a tree, he climbed up the first layers of rock that formed the grotto on the right. Here he knelt down. There was a small pickaxe lying beside him. He took it and gave three blows to the nearest heap of stones. They came tumbling down in front ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... entrance to the grotto, Haydee noticed that Bertuccio was making a hole in the rock with his pickaxe. ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... he heard quite clearly underneath the ground below him the dull shock of a pickaxe. The noise came almost from beneath his feet; so near the mine had been already driven to the walls. The strokes fell with the regularity of the ticking of a clock. But at times the sound changed in character. The muffled thud ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... Architects, Gibulum, Joabert and Stokin, and directed them to go and search among the ancient ruins, in hopes of discovering more treasure. They departed, and one of them, viz., Gibulum, in working with a pickaxe among the rubbish, discovered a large iron ring fixed in a cubic stone. On removing this stone, a cavern was discovered. Gibulum offered to descend. A rope being fastened 'round his body, and in this manner ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... England, and died in 1167. Her rich sepulchre at Bec was pillaged by the English in 1421, and the restored monument was desecrated in 1793, but in 1846 the original casket was discovered by the fortunate stroke of a pickaxe, and now rests in the Cathedral. In 1124 the shrine containing the body of the famous St. Romain was opened in the presence of the King and Queen of England, and fifty-four years afterwards, as the decorations made for it by Guillaume ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... and there was reason to apprehend serious mischief would occur; one of them hit the Porter with his spade, and several others were prepared to follow his example; while a second, who seem'd a little more blood-thirsty than the rest, raised his pickaxe in a menacing attitude; upon perceiving which, Dashall jump'd over the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... founded toward the end of the fifteenth century at the time of the decadence of Gothic architecture. It was then a Catholic church consecrated to St. Lawrence; now it is the first Protestant church in the city. Protestantism, with religious vandalism, entered the ancient church with a pickaxe and a whitewash brush, and with bigoted fanaticism broke, scraped, rasped, plastered, and destroyed all that was beautiful and splendid, and reduced it to a bare, white, cold edifice, such as ought to have been devoted ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... to examine the tools and implements in the mill workshop and he found a pickaxe, one point of which had been subjected to rather rough treatment. I naturally connected that pickaxe with the ledge of rock that had ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... obtain just water enough to keep us alive. The party who had tried to sink a well had invariably been stopped by hard limestone rock in every place they had tried, and all their attempts to penetrate it by means of a cold chisel and pickaxe had proved abortive. The party which had been out with me searching for water had not seen the slightest sign which indicated its presence on the island: we had taken a spade with us, but wherever we dug had come down upon the solid rock. Under these circumstances ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... which I had the contract was by no means easy to construct. We had to cut through the solid rock, working in the air, suspended by ropes. This perilous labour so disheartened our workmen that some of them left us; to encourage the rest, I was slung up like them, and like them handled the pickaxe. One day, in the explosion of a charge a piece of stone struck the rope of one of my men with such violence that it cut it as clean in two as the edge of a razor would have done. The man fell—I believed him to be lost; by a miracle, his clothes ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... from a mere hole,' replied Mr. Mortimer: 'from that dirty little patch of water by the side of yonder hedge—do you see? It is very shallow, and is therefore soon encrusted: but even before it was cut by the pickaxe, it would not have been smooth enough to have slidden upon, and now you see it is all in pieces, and you might as well try to slide on a heap ...
— Christmas, A Happy Time - A Tale, Calculated for the Amusement and Instruction of Young Persons • Miss Mant
... future"—those luckless phrases which were yet destined to form so large a portion of senatorial eloquence, and give birth to so prolific an offspring of European ridicule—figured in diplomacy for the first time; while our pioneers stood, pickaxe in hand, waiting the order to break ground. We thus lost day after day. Couriers were busy, while soldiers were yawning themselves to death; and the only war carried on was in the discontents of the military councils. Who ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... piercing of a tunnel through Monte Rotondo, a gigantic undertaking always in project, put off from year to year, demanding millions of money and thousands of workmen, and which was begun in great pomp a week before the election. His report gave the thing a comic air—the first blow of the pickaxe given by the candidate in the enormous mountain covered by ancient forests, the speech of the Prefect, the benediction of the flags with the cries of "Long live Bernard Jansoulet!" and the two hundred workmen beginning the task at once, working day and night for a week; then, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... same difference between the factory and the tavern that there is to a middle-class man between a late night at the office and a supper at Pagani's. The slum novelist is content with pointing out that to the eye of his particular class a pickaxe looks dirty and a pewter pot looks dirty. But the man he is supposed to be studying sees the difference between them exactly as a clerk sees the difference between a ledger and an edition de luxe. The chiaroscuro of the life is inevitably lost; for to us the high lights and the shadows are a light ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... of manuscripts, Arni Magnusson. The great eruption of Hecla in 1390 overwhelmed two famous homesteads in the immediate neighbourhood. From the local history of these homesteads and their inmates, Vigfusson thinks it not unlikely that some records may still be there "awaiting the spade and pickaxe of a new Schliemann." Sturlunga ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... and specifications showing its extent and magnificence have been continually before the board for the last month; and in such repute have been a smashed door-sill or an old arch, that freshmen have now abandoned conic sections for crowbars, and instead of the "Principia" have taken up the pickaxe. You know, my dear fellow, with what enthusiasm I enter into any scheme for the aggrandizement of our Alma Mater, so I need not tell you how ardently I adventured into the career now opened to me. My time was completely devoted to ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... above our heads, and that opening shielded now by a simple curtain, but which in an instant, without my moving from this place, I can so hermetically seal that no man, save he be armed with crowbar and pickaxe, could enter here, even if man could know of our imprisonment, in a house soon to be closed from top to bottom by my ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... their intended fortification were some spots appropriated to superstitious practices; which the negroes no sooner perceived in danger of violation by the spade and pickaxe, than they ran to arms, and began to interrupt the work. The Portuguese persisted in their purpose, and there had soon been tumult and bloodshed, had not the admiral, who was at a distance to superintend the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... this occasion, the aged seemed to have recovered the vigour of youth, and women and children to have acquired the strength of manhood. In a word, men of all trades and professions were confounded, and cheerfully handled the pickaxe and shovel: delicate females, sprucely dressed, were seen here and there wheeling along barrows filled with earth; while long strings of stout fellows dragged heavy loads in carts and waggons. As the electric matter runs along the several links of an ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... object, we immediately mounted our horses, Uncle Denis and the Dominie each carrying a spade, and the two men a pickaxe a-piece, while Boxer and Toby followed at our heels. As we galloped over the ground, we were not long in reaching the scene of the massacre. Dio, who had the sharpest eyes amongst us, was stationed to keep a look-out, while we, securing our horses, at once set about our melancholy ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... Phthisis ftizo. Phthisical ftiza. Physic kuracilo. Physical fizika. Physician fizikisto, kuracisto. Physics naturscienco, fiziko. Physiognomy fizionomio. Physiology fiziologio. Piano fortepiano. Piaster piastro. Pick (choose) elekti. Pick (implement) pikfosilo. Pickaxe pikfosilo. Picket (military) pikedo. Pickle (to salt) pekli. Pickle (liquid) peklakvo. Pickpocket fripono. Picnic kampfesteno. Picquet (cards) pikedo. Pictorial ilustrita. Picture pentrajxo. Picturesque pentrinda. Pie pastecxo. Piebald multkolora. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... nothing about blame, Miss,' cried Miss Nipper, 'for I know that you object, but I may wish, Miss, that the family was set to work to make new roads, and that Miss Blimber went in front and had the pickaxe.' ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... something if he could be made to work. I long to give him a pickaxe, and set him on upon the roads. Then he would see the beauty of them! I hate to hear him maunder on about imagination, while he leaves his tenantry to take their chance. HE knows what eyes Percy and ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Agamemnon, "they found there pots and kettles. Now, I should like to know how they did it; and I mean to borrow a book and read. I think it was done with a pickaxe." ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... the projection of the features has been calculated so as to produce the desired effect at the right height when seen from below. The district lying between Tanis and Bubastis is thickly studded with monuments built or embellished by the Amenemhaits and Usirtasens: wherever the pickaxe is applied, whether at Fakus or Tell-Nebesheh, remains of them are brought to light—statues, stelae, tables of offerings, and fragments of dedicatory or historical inscriptions. While carrying on works ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... To dream of a pickaxe, denotes a relentless enemy is working to overthrow you socially. A broken one, implies disaster to ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... first to speak. He was a grey-haired, broad-shouldered man, of the type which, in Tuscan phrase, is moulded with the fist and polished with the pickaxe; but the self-important gravity which had written itself out in the deep lines about his brow and mouth seemed intended to correct any contemptuous inferences from the hasty workmanship which Nature had bestowed ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... third place, came some tools—an auger, a gimlet, a handsaw, an assortment of nails and brads, a spade, a shovel, a pickaxe, a hatchet, an adze, ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... Timbuctoo, and that at Seville; it is about 200 feet high, perfectly square, and a person may ride up to the top on horseback, having a gradual ascent, and seven chambers one above the other: the cement with which it is made is so hardened that no pickaxe can destroy it. It was represented to the sultan Muhamed that the apartments in this tower were the haunts of vice and immorality, and the sultan ordered the floor or terras, by which visitors ascend, to be broken; it was found, however, impossible to destroy it, wherefore the workmen were ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... On the morrow, my Andrew went out early to work, along with one Robin Rouse, our neighbour; they had not been gone above an hour, when they both came back seemingly very much frightened. Says Andrew, 'Go you, Robin, and borrow a pickaxe at neighbour Styles's.' What is the matter now?' said I. 'Matter enough!' quoth Andrew; 'we may come to be hanged, perhaps, as many an innocent man has before us.' 'Tell me what is the matter,' said ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... Tudor tyranny—Catherine, the divorced wife of Henry VIII, and poor sinning Mary Queen of Scots. His famous picture in Peterborough Cathedral, on the wall of the western transept, usually attracts the chief attention of the tourist, and has preserved his name and fame. He is represented with a spade, pickaxe, keys, and a whip in his leathern girdle, and at his feet lies a skull. In the upper left-hand corner appear the arms of the see of Peterborough, save that the cross-keys are converted into cross-swords. ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... shovel, and pickaxe, and went over to the Mount in the beginning of a dark winter's evening, when he fell to work, and before morning had dug a pit twenty-two feet deep, and nearly as broad, covering it over with long sticks and straw. Then he strewed a little mould over ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... first condemned, living his active manhood through the experience of the great battlefields in Italy, wounded (a valet rather than a soldier) at Pavia, the perpetual chorus of Francis I., privileged to witness the first stroke of the pickaxe against the mediaeval Louvre, and to see the first Italian dignity of the great stone houses on the Loire—being all this, the Renaissance was the stuff on which ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... breast, with coal-black collar and neck and head of cinnamon. His golden tail droops far below his perch, and, running downward along the tree-trunk, it flashes in the air like a sceptre over the wood-lice he devours with his pickaxe bill. "Go to the ant, thou sluggard!" was an instigation to murder in the flicker, who loves young ants as much as wild-cherries or Indian corn, and is capable of taking any such satire seriously upon things to eat. Not so elfin and devilish as the small black woodpecker, ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... me in mind that I wanted many things, notwithstanding all that I had amassed together; and of these, this of ink was one, as also spade, pickaxe, and shovel, to dig or remove the earth; needles, pins, and thread. As for linen, I soon learnt to want that ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... descend and look at this miner. The hole is narrow and deep; at the bottom of it is a dark tunnel two feet broad, between two and three feet high, and twenty-five feet long. At the farther extremity of it crouches a man with a pickaxe in his hands, and a candle beside him. It is a very awkward position in which to work, and the result is that this man pants and blows and sighs, and sometimes laughs quietly to himself at the comicality of his attitudes, while the perspiration pours over ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... Englishman. He was not particularly successful, nor were his researches very extensive, being carried on entirely with his private means; yet his name will always be honorably remembered, for he was the first who went to work with pickaxe and shovel, who hired men to dig, who measured and described some of the principal mounds on the Euphrates, thus laying down the groundwork of all later and more fruitful explorations in that region. ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... adjoining the dwelling of Don Mariano de Silva. The Indian labourers, who never work a moment beyond the prescribed time, at the first sound of the bell had all suddenly stopped as if struck by paralysis. The pickaxe raised aloft, the spade half buried in the earth, the goad lifted to prick forward the ox, fell simultaneously from their hands; while the oxen themselves, accustomed to imitate their drivers, came at once to a stand, leaving ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... depth of the ravine came a man with a pickaxe shaped like a stork's neck with the bill on it. He was an Egyptian slave, old and entirely naked. He looked for a while with the utmost amazement at the work of the soldiers; then, springing between them ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... brought them out all my store of tools, and gave every man a digging-spade, a shovel, and a rake, for we had no barrows or ploughs; and to every separate place a pickaxe, a crow, a broad axe, and a saw; always appointing, that as often as any were broken or worn out, they should be supplied without grudging out of the general stores that I left behind. Nails, staples, hinges, hammers, chisels, knives, scissors, and all sorts of ironwork, ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... Hawkehurst during these happy days of his courtship. The world was his oyster, and that oyster was yet unopened. For some years he had been hacking and hewing the shell thereof with the sword of the freebooter, to very little advantageous effect. He now set himself seriously to work with the pickaxe of the steady-going labourer. He was a secessionist from the great army of adventurers. He wanted to enrol himself in the ranks of the respectable, the plodders, the ratepayers, the simple citizens who love their wives and children, and go to their parish ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... found depth enough and room enough for all. Over a meadow and down a bluff a path led from camp to a big paper mill which stood above a gorge of the Saranac River. The huge pile of pulp, at which men were picking and prying with pickaxe and canthook, ought to be a gold mine in these days of high prices of paper. Beyond was the dam, higher than a house on its clear side and (so we were told) of equal depth on the other. Along the sides of the big basin there was room for the whole regiment; and the ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... Pertaub. You have, I see, brought a pickaxe. It will save us half an hour's work; and besides, I am glad to say ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... Duchess, to whom he had given a hint of what was going on, had been taken seriously ill from over-excitement, but had recovered herself a little, and the Duke was describing this when he was suddenly interrupted by a series of full and heavy blows struck upon the other side of the wall of the room. A pickaxe was evidently at work. The whole house was shaken by the violence of the attack, and a screen, which stood near the spot, ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... that, beautiful as the dead form looked, and guiltless as Septimius must be held in causing his death, still he felt as if he should be eased when it was under the ground. He hastened down to the house, and brought up a shovel and a pickaxe, and began his unwonted task of grave-digging, delving earnestly a deep pit, sometimes pausing in his toil, while the sweat-drops poured from him, to look at the beautiful clay that was to occupy it. Sometimes he paused, too, to listen to the shots that pealed in the far distance, towards ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Father," answered the youth.—"Martin and Dan, take pickaxe and mattock, and follow me if you ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... and the entire party proceeded in the direction of the gully, or cleft, upon their arrival at which preparations were at once made for a possible sojourn of a few days; and while those preparations were being made, Earle and Dick, carrying a pickaxe and shovel, as well as their rifles, started to climb the cleft, bent upon examining the spot where the emeralds had been found, and, if possible, settling the question as to whether or not a ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... above. However, that I might not have the front of my trowsers torn as well as the behind, as soon as I gained my footing I turned round, with my back to the bars of the cage, but I had not been there a minute before I was attacked by something which digged into me like a pickaxe, and as the hyaena had torn my clothes, I had no defence against it. To turn round would have been worse still; so, after having received above a dozen stabs, I contrived by degrees to shift my position until I was opposite to another cage, but not until the pelican, for it was ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... escaped from him, however, and sprang into the pigeon-house. The King's son waited until her father came, and then he told him that the stranger maiden had leapt into the pigeon-house. The old man thought, "Can it be Cinderella?" and they had to bring him an axe and a pickaxe that he might hew the pigeon-house to pieces, but no one was inside it. And when they got home Cinderella lay in her dirty clothes among the ashes, and a dim little oil-lamp was burning on the mantle-piece, ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... [Sings.] A pickaxe and a spade, a spade, For and a shrouding sheet; O, a pit of clay for to be made For such ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... a shelf, held his neck erect, gave no sign of suffering from any wound, and though he was motionless, his small black eyes seemed to be ever keenly watchful. His formidable bill, very sharp, three or three and a half inches long, and shaped like a pickaxe, was held perfectly level. But the wonder was that he did not struggle or make the slightest movement. We had a tortoise-shell cat, an old Tom of great experience, who was so fond of lying under the stove in frosty weather ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... the sod hereabouts for some minutes, one of the men rose, ran to a disused porch of the church where tools were kept, and returned with the sexton's pickaxe and shovel, with which ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... a-knocked me down with a pickaxe," said Beale later, "so help me three men and a boy you might. It's a rum go. My lord 'e says there's some woman been writing letters to 'im this long time saying she'd got 'old of 'is long-lost nephew or cousin or something, ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... fires, with outposts stationed," says Lieutenant-Colonel Chambers, "until all the rest were over. We left the lines after it was fair day and then came off." As our soldiers withdrew they distinctly heard the sound of pickaxe and shovel at the British works.[172] Before seven o'clock the entire force had crossed to New York, and among the last to leave was the commander-in-chief. "General Washington," adds Chambers, "saw the last ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... office, and was a fourth time consul. He had completed his military reforms, and the army was now a professional service, with regular pay. Trained corps of engineers were attached to each legion. The campaigns of the Romans were thenceforward to be conducted with spade and pickaxe as much as with sword and javelin, and the soldiers learnt the use of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... Austin recently became possessed of what they thought was a clue of the whereabouts of the treasure, and Thursday night they repaired to the place after dark and plied the pickaxe and shovel with great diligence for about ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... under-keeper until he had hemmed once or twice, when Joceline answered the signal by showing a glimpse of light from the dark lantern which he carried. Guided by this intimation of his presence, the divine found him leaning against a buttress which had once supported a terrace, now ruinous. He had a pickaxe and shovel, together with a deer's hide hanging ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... he can never re-visit the spot again; immense sums remain buried in those places, and are irrecoverably lost. Search is often made by persons who labor in anticipation of throwing up with their spade and pickaxe, gold bars, diamond crosses sparkling amongst the dirt, bags of golden doubloons, and chests, wedged close with moidores, ducats and pearls; but although great treasures lie hid in this way, it seldom happens ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... a warmth hitherto unsurpassed. The slaughter in all parts of the town was very great. We were occasionally employed in restoring the works which the enemy had knocked down. Not a moment was there for rest; every man was employed either in fighting or toiling with pickaxe or shovel. Many parts of the town were set on fire, a lurid glare being cast over the whole scene, exposing to sight the falling buildings, the brave garrison working their guns or labouring in the trenches, the wounded carried off on litters, the dead ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... old miner drew rein in front of a great mass of shattered, ragged, dirty looking quartz rock. In front of this a deep hole had been dug by somebody, and near it were traces of old camp-fires, bones of deer and buffalo, some rusty tin cans, and a worn-out pickaxe. ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... swamp— Begirt by ponds and vapors damp And aromatic cedar trees Who's branches caught the passing breeze— Stretched upward on the western side Of the "Deep Cut," where then were plied The spade and pickaxe side by side; For, by the shade of Colonel By, Who shaped this city's destiny! There delved full many a hard case in, That channel to the Canal Basin. There, then dwelt many a sturdy blade, Adepts at handling the spade, And bruisers at the wheeling trade, As witness ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... fellow holding up his hands to receive the bodies. You should have made him digging a hole for them. How awfully grand; with a pickaxe, digging, ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... long been with them before a day was appointed for the celebration of one of their religious, or rather superstitious, rites. This was the consecration of the holy pickaxe, the implement always used by these men for burying those whom they have slain. A fakir, versed in all the learning of the Thugs, was seated, when the auspicious day arrived, with his face turned to the west, and placed the pickaxe in a brass dish which was set before him. ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... many beautiful homes on this lofty hilltop, but they were all for sale at bargains, for their occupants have grown weary of the cloud bursts of the long dreary rainy season, then of the parching heats of the equally dreary dry season, when a pickaxe and crowbar are required to dig a potato unless you keep water running from the hose day and night. These people long to return to their old homes in New England where the varying seasons are not ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... 'Our fathers,' says Horace, 'worse than our grandfathers, have given birth to us, their more vicious progeny, who, in our turn, shall become the parents of a still viler generation.'[10.4] You all know the fable of the buried Pict, who bit off the end of a pickaxe, with which sacrilegious hands were breaking open his grave, and called out with a voice like subterranean thunder, I perceive the degeneracy of your race by the smallness of your little finger! videlicet, the pickaxe. This, to be sure, ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... were being delivered from a cart at the door; an upholsterer's wagon also stopped the way; nothing was to be seen but workmen, swarming from the kitchens to the garret. Inside and outside alike; bricklayers, painters, carpenters, masons; hammer, hod, brush, pickaxe, saw, trowel: all at work together, in ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser |
